


Honey Mouth

by bby_rabbit



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fluff, Romance, Short & Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 04:02:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29645484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bby_rabbit/pseuds/bby_rabbit
Summary: Katara has always wanted her own crazy-making romance, but the cliches aren't so fun when it's a lived experience.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 29





	Honey Mouth

**_“Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom.” ~ Terry Pratchett_ **

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The denizens of Ba Sing Se know how to celebrate. They lack the rigid-spine austerity of the Fire Nation and are boisterous, which is so unlike the cold politeness of the Water Tribes.

"You're not s'posed to drink it like that." Katara lowers the colorful mask back over her nose.

"How else am I _supposed_ to drink it?" Zuko sucks in his jaws, staring down into his amber colored drink. He'd been sipping from it like a hummingbird. Katara takes the tiny cup from his hand, tiling her head back. The shape of her mask around her nose is that of a beak. She opens her mouth big and gulps down the alcohol in one go, without gagging, her nostrils twitching.

"Like that..." She wipes at the dribble of drink and saliva at the corner of her mouth with her fingers, the bell shaped sleeve of her robe sliding down her arm. Zuko sticks out his tongue like he's not an adult and retches. 

"That's disgusting." He tugs at his own mask, that had been painted to look vulpine. The squiggly whiskers on its cheek remind Katara of water symbols on a map.

"Oh? I just don't think you know how to have fun." Katara smacks her lips. The tavern tumbles with hearty chaos. A small band of three men wail a song about a man, a woman, and a cave in the mountains. Cups are broken. A man weeps into the large chest of a woman in dramatic makeup.

"How is not having a gag reflex fun?" Zuko observes this. He can't see the pinch of Katara's brows but she puffs up her cheeks, her mask rising with them.

"That is exactly what's wrong with you royal-types." Katara finally says after some time, waving down another tavern maiden for more of those horrid drinks.

"And what is that?" Now he is laughing.

"You're too busy worried about the dumb details, but guess what? The rest of us are having fun." Katara flips one of her girl-like braids over a shoulder. It was her idea to shirk their responsibilities as leaders for the evening. Apparently, what the noble-folk have in mind for celebrating the changing season wasn't up to Katara's standards. Staying inside of the palace and talking about more politics and more gossip—the very idea of it made Katara want to skin herself. There was more of that to come, why waste a good time pretending to 'do the right thing' for the little people who have no say so in their governing? 

_'Stuffy-rich folk pfft,'_ Is what she had said exactly.

Zuko scans their surroundings through the narrow slits of his mask, sucking on his bottom lip that faintly tastes like the burning sweet alcohol. 

"Inebriation isn't even a little bit tantalizing." He watches Katara slide the tavern maiden a few more coins. She doesn't say anything to that but she does give her shoulder a cute shrug and roll. 

More drinks come. Katara drinks them down like water. Zuko assists but only at his own pace. He continues to peck at his cup like a bee does the nectar and pollen of flowers. In small doses that eventually grow into a great, warm amount of fullness.

.....

Zuko arrives at a comfortable drunkenness, but Katara far surpasses that threshold. If it were at all within the realm of possibility, she most definitely would've melted into a hot puddle. They'd abandoned the tavern for good food, sharing beef on a stick.

"Katara, surely you don't intend on returning to the palace like this?" Zuko held onto her arm as she chewed through the tough meat. She had sweated out the silk smoothness of her plaits. Strands of curls stuck out over her mask. The humidity had gotten to them both. 

"And if I do intend to?" She swallows the beef. Her eyes are extra glossy. Even though she is drunk, Katara still possesses her lady-like demeanor, but it is greatly exaggerated. Each time they cross paths with a beautiful woman or a fat baby, she makes quite a show of herself. The last baby they saw made her cry with his 'precious spit bubbles'.

"Surely you don't." He holds her closer as the crowd thickens. She doesn't seem to care that the pathways can no longer fit the swarms of people. 

The moon sits bulbous and blunt in the sky.

"Do you know what the _good noble men_ would have to say about you?" Zuko sprinkles a little sugar on his very serious question. What would they say about him more importantly? A single man of good pedigree running around with a single woman and what not...

"Zuko, darling, I do not care the least bit what those curmudgeonly old men would have to say. Say is just what they will have to do—they can keep on say saying." Katara is staring at the moon, believing it to be following her in the fugue of intoxication.

"I will leave caring about wealthy old men to you." Katara squeezes his forearm.

"Katara, it is only you I care about."

"If that were the case, I think we would be this close under quite different circumstances." She presses herself into his side the further they sink into the sea of busybodies.

"What is that supposed to mean?" He squawks. The ribbons of his mask hug around pressure points, suddenly he has a headache.

"You know damn well what it means, Zuko." Her feelings finally reach the surface and Zuko feels like a fool for allowing any of this and _then_ to happen. 

.....

Katara threw up in a flower pot. All that walking had exacerbated the flip floppiness of her stomach. The foods, candies, and sudden heat of all the people. Zuko decided that they weren't going to make it back to the palace (they could but that doesn't mean that they should). After holding back her hair, shielding her from the grimaces of merry people _trying_ to have fun with his body, he'd scooped her into his arms and put money down at the nicest looking inn he could find. 

The room is sparse, tidy, but has this stale smell, as though all the summer heat had been trapped inside. Zuko bumps Katara's head against the door frame and she mewls an _Oh Zuko_ , three times. Her tongue clicks with saliva. _Oh Zuko. Oh Zuko._

"You're impossible." He lowers her heavy body into the only bed in the room. It was all they had available. 

Katara turns onto her back, rolling the mask over her forehead. She watches Zuko fumble through the darkness for a candle, a spit of fire at his index finger. His long hair folds over the ribbons holding his mask in place. 

"You're such a gentleman, wanting to preserve the sanctity of my reputation," Katara tosses the mask onto the floor. Zuko only makes a groan in the back of his throat as he lights three candles with his finger. 

"What would the world do if they were privy to such information, that little ole Katara was a person after all?" She really just wants to get a rise out of him. Zuko is easy to fluster. It's a trait he hadn't grown out of. He grew more muscles and lines in his face, but sanctimony and righteousness, he never misses a chance to make a speech. It's the precondition of being a man after all. 

"No one thinks otherwise, _Lady Katara._ " He emphasizes _lady_ in a sing-song way. The tinkle of a smile in his voice. Even with his back turned, she just knows he rolled his eyes.

"What do they think of me then, Zuko?"

"I thought you didn't care what other people thought of you." He also removes his mask, hair trickling down his back.

"I don't care what old men think of me. You're only partially an old man." She rolls on her side when he sits on the edge of the bed. The wood panels creak and sigh under his weight.

"Still an old man though?" He gives her a lopsided smirk, dumbstruck by how pretty she is with her disheveled plaits and wet eyelashes.

"Twenty five is kinda old." Katara has never pretended to think Zuko was ugly. His attractiveness is profound in a timeless sense and the rough landscape of his scar to his ear gives his beauty a uniqueness. ' _Women love damaged things'_ , he'd once said. 

Katara stares at him openly, resting her cheek in her hand. Zuko snorts to himself and turns away so that she can't see him blush. She remembers being a third wheel to that 'damaged' conversation with Mai. She'd properly rebutted, _'I think you're just scared of your own sex appeal.'_

And like his profound beauty, that was a profoundly true statement. Zuko slouches away from blunt affection like an incurious cat. Unlike Mai, she knows it's because he has believed himself to be unworthy of it. Or maybe, Mai does know now. Katara hasn't asked about their relationship out of misguided jealousy. 

"How are we going to explain this away in the morning?" She closes her eyes. Zuko shifts to take off his sandals, the bed shakes.

"I haven't thought that far."

"You're the Lord of The Fire Nation, you shouldn't have to explain anything." Katara sucks her teeth.

"But I do, for every allowance—I answer for it."

Then there is an undercurrent of silence. The noise of celebration still bounces around outside the shut window. Zuko is trying to figure out what next to do with his body. Katara swims around in her very drunk feelings. She sits up first on her elbows, observing the slow flutter of his lashes and the amber patterns of his irises against the fire light. Then she moves her entire body against his back, resting her hands against his shoulder blades, her face right under the back of his neck, on the knots of his spine.

"Oh, Zuko, no one can make you do anything." Her warm breath slithers down his back, under his shirt. He relaxes from a solid form to liquid, underestimating the power of the few drinks he'd also had.

"There's consequences." A tornado of lust works itself in the lower trenches of his belly. 

"Just say you're sorry. Like you always do. Apologize right? That will just make it all better." Katara speaks facetiously of the last time they had a conversation about 'them' or as she had so beautifully sputtered 'us'.

Zuko didn't think Katara deserved someone like him, that she could ultimately do better. With all the goodness she has to offer the world, what right did he have to think it belonged only to him? And he was somewhat right, Katara was doing good in the world without the formula of 'them'.

He moves a hand over her soft knuckles. She takes a fistful of the fabric then lands a wet kiss on the nape of his neck, through the waterfall of his hair.

"I'm sorry, Katara." She bemoans, her name melting in her mouth like a cube of ice. "I'm so so so so sorry."

Katara sort of deflates into his hard back, loosening her grip on his shirt. The will to fight escaping the cage of her body. 

"I am sorry." He mumbles loud enough for her ears.

"A shame it is that there aren't enough apologies in the world to fix my hurt feelings." Katara likes to think of her insides as a battlefield, run through and barren. Drought thirsty. And all that blood, a mixture of her own and all the lives that have walked across her empty soil. 

Katara has always wanted to be in love and when it happened it was everything she wanted it to be. Consuming. Self absorbed. Stupid. She loves Zuko awfully stupid, enormously, and unconditionally. It never went away. A curse she had brought upon herself.

He turns, Katara adjusting her body to the sudden twist of his. They stare into each other's faces.

"If I didn't love you a great deal, would I even be here?" He declares this more than he asks.

"I guess you wouldn't." Katara squishes her face against his sharp shoulder, allowing her hand to roam beneath his shirt. She just wants to feel the warmth of his belly and its ripples. His skin is a burning late summer hot. 

......

Perhaps if she had been more direct with Zuko, they wouldn't be in this self imposed precarious situation. Katara hadn't said anything, despite her monstrous desire. It was a kind of want young girls don't possess the verbiage for. She loved (still does) his gnarled ear and thought of gumming it with her lips over her teeth. His seriousness was otherworldly, mature (she thought so then but now she knows it was only an obsessive sadness). 

But Mai happened, sprouting tall and pretty from seemingly (but not really) nowhere. It felt like Katara had lost but there was no battle to be had. Zuko didn't readily offer information on his past. He was always in a sprint away from it. 

Katara told him later the severity of her feelings and it tore at the seams of their friendship. It took a while to repair their relationship.

To be fair, she couldn't blame Zuko. Mai is elegantly pretty even when she isn't meaning to be. A pointy chin and cat eyes. Bone straight hair. A nose and cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass.

Compared to little Katara with her round, baby face and bushy hair. Sokka used to always remind her of her stubby-toe fingers.

So, to feel powerful and impolite, she doesn't ask about Mai when Zuko exposes her nipples to the stagnant air. Katara greedily hums into his mouth when his hand touches the space below her navel. This same hand stops on the back of her thigh as he sinks his penis deep into her. 

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End file.
